Sunday, February 17, 2013

Another piece, a book this time, comparing climate change deniers to other conspiracy theorists [What about the conspiracy theory that says rich executives are destroying the planet by selling us products that cause bad weather?]

Satellites detect no significant warming over the gridbox covering the Kenyan localities mentioned in the Guardian story.

While CRUT4 surface data agrees pretty well with satellites up to about 1998 – after that the surface departs erratically much warmer, improving somewhat in 2012. I would bet the sheep station that the surface data will be at fault here, probably micro-site effects – note the increased data gaps too. Remember these anomalies are from the entire grid-box area – there will be individual stations better and worse.Ironic that UNEP has HQ in Kenya. What does this say for CRUT4 quality control measures – big on published words – next to non-existent in reality.

If you look at the very early studies and observations of polar bears, you can find anecdotal evidence of goose egg harvesting. In Fred Bruemmers books from the early 1970s, Inuit hunters talk about the bears diet while on land, including raiding goose nests. In fact, much of what we ‘know’ about polar bears can be found in these very early books. It has since been rewritten by scientists but the fact remains that the Inuit and northerners knew much of this before science told them it was ‘discovered’.

My takeaway from this is simple. Unusual weather events happen. They always have. If global warming continues unchecked we may reach a day when weather events of unusual scope and intensity become more frequent. But that day is in the future, not the present.